8 gang suspects arraigned in NYC anti-gay attack

8 gang suspects arraigned in NYC anti-gay attack

The abandoned home that served as a clubhouse, and allegedly a torture chamber, for a street gang accused of trapping and brutalizing three gay men is seen, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2010 in the Bronx borough of New York.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Eight gang suspects arrested in connection with the torture of two teenage boys and a man in an anti-gay attack earlier this month have been arraigned.

The defendants were expected to face charges including robbery, assault and unlawful imprisonment as hate crimes at their arraignment Sunday, but no charges were read aloud in court. The defendants didn't enter pleas.

Police were looking for a ninth suspect, who had been expected to turn himself in but didn't show up.

The nine members of the Latin King Goonies gang heard a rumor one of their teenage recruits was gay and then found the teen, stripped him, beat him and sodomized him with a plunger handle until he confessed to having had sex with a man, police said. The gang members then found a second teen they suspected was gay and tortured him and the man, police say.

The gang members found the 30-year-old man by inviting him to a house, telling him they were having a party, police said. When he arrived, they burned, beat and tortured him for hours and sodomized him with a miniature baseball bat, police said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was sickened by the accusations of violence "and saddened by the anti-gay bias." The attacks, which occurred Oct. 3 in the Bronx, followed a string of teen suicides around the country last month that were attributed to anti-gay bullying.

On Sept. 22, a New Jersey university student killed himself after his gay sexual encounter in his dorm room was broadcast online. Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River.

Days after the body of Clementi, a promising violinist, was recovered, more than 500 people attended a memorial service for a 13-year-old central California boy, Seth Walsh, who hanged himself after enduring taunts from classmates about being gay.

Gay men and women live openly in the largely Hispanic neighborhood where the Oct. 3 attacks took place, Morris Heights, and while residents were disturbed by some past violent behavior blamed on the defendants, some said they hadn't previously targeted homosexuals.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is openly gay, and other elected officials went to the empty brick townhouse where the attacks occurred and passed out leaflets.

"People were very, very clear that they wanted it to be known that the acts of these individuals do not represent their neighborhood," Quinn said. "They were as stunned as anyone that something so violent, so premeditated ... could happen here."